


growing pains

by wakyak



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: High School, M/M, chaotic miyas
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-08
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 23:42:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29286993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakyak/pseuds/wakyak
Summary: rintaro and osamu's final year
Relationships: Miya Osamu/Suna Rintarou
Kudos: 8





	1. twins and typhoons

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this like a year ago and just dug it up out of my docs like tonight because i want to be the person i was when i was twenty-one and able to feel chaotic emotions
> 
> tbh it needs a lot of work and doesn't really flowww?? which is why i'm splitting this up into oneshots. but know i wrote them all with the same mental state and haphazard emotion that i used to embody pre-covid

Atsumu and Osamu have their hearts broken on the same day.

Kita Shinsuke, who’s been doing farmwork his whole life will continue to live just three kilometres south of their house.

Osamu drags Rintarou out of school with him, he’s not talking about anything, no matter what half-assed question Rintarou throws him. They take a detour on the way home for Osamu to take out his anger on the flood sign by the rice paddies. The sky starts to streak with pink, and when Rintarou looks up from his phone, it’s dark.

Osamu shoves his hands deep in his pockets and turns to Rintarou, mouth downturned.

“You stayin’ over tonight?”

“Is this supposed to be you asking me?”

“You either are or you ain’t,” Osamu only grumbles, probably because he used all his vitriol up on the innocent stones lining the pathway. “Granny’s been askin’ after you.”

“Well if it’s your grandmother that wants to play Kingdom Hearts with me till two in the morning, I guess I can’t say no,” Rintarou concedes, injecting as much false sincerity into his voice as he can.

* * *

Osamu lives with five other Miyas in a traditional house bordered by an engawa. Inside, there are two altars with cupboards specifically for incense, and a separate set of china that no one is supposed to use.

Well, last time Rintarou checked there were only five others. That belief is called into question upon arrival, when they're greeted by a man sitting on the engawa, smoking a cigarette. A Miya. The resemblance is uncanny; animal eyes in a beautiful man’s skull. The mystery only intensifies once Osamu trudges past him as if he doesn’t even exist and proceeds to fling the front door open like he means to rip it off the runners.

Rintarou briefly entertains the idea that he’s spontaneously gained the ability to see ghosts.

“Samu-kun,” the man says—or whines, and ew, he sounds like Atsumu— “Aren’t you gonna introduce me to your friend?”

Osamu kicks off his shoes violently. On the off-chance this guy isn’t a ghost, evidently he is, in Osamu’s opinion at least, a person to be ignored. Rintarou takes the three stairs to the door in one and watches the guy’s face pinch up in the glow of his cigarette. Ignoring a Miya is basically a critical hit.

“Samu-kun, now that ain’t very adult of you,” Ghost Miya tries, sugary sweet as Osamu shrugs his coat off with his teeth bared. “You don’t want me to call Granny over here, do you? Looks like the cat got Samu-kun’s tongue, Granny—”

“Fine!” Osamu spits, nostrils flaring. If ignoring a Miya is a critical hit, blackmail with their paternal grandmother is basically an instant KO. The ruler of this ecosystem is a tiny, seventy one year old woman. Beneath her is the household food chain in which hierarchy does not exist. “Tarou, this is my cousin Emori. He got kicked out by his girlfriend for cheatin’. Now he’s sleepin’ in the tv room like a no-good bum.”

“Oh,” Rintarou says tonelessly. He dips into a shallow bow with his hands in his pockets. Emori tries to smile at the same time he sucks in on his cigarette, resulting in a face that’s uncannily terrifying in the dark. Yeah, no. Rintarou isn’t entirely convinced the suspicious cousin isn’t a spectre or something.

“Could ya leave that open for me?” Emori says, gesturing at the front door where Rintarou is toeing off his shoes.

Well, that is how the evil spirits get you. “Sure,” Rintarou replies. He leaves his coat on the rack and follows Osamu into the blossoming chaos of the Miya home.

Anyone who spends more than a couple of hours in the company of the twins will quickly come to the realisation that having twice the amount of Miya is not directly proportional to the awfulness of the ordeal. Rintarou has had two years to collect data on this phenomenon. By this point, he’s fairly confident in the theory that their combined effect is exponential in nature, with the variable power liable to shift depending on circumstance.

Put simply, the twins are moody assholes. Osamu is a gloomy moody asshole, Atsumu is a volatile moody asshole. And when they’ve both had their hearts broken on the same day, by the same guy who made them each feel special only to tell them they get treated the exact same as everyone else, well, Rintarou doesn’t have the data to mitigate the fall out.

The realisation that he’s just walked into a figurative powder keg doesn’t fully hit Rintarou until he’s sprawled out on the tatami in the tv room, reflecting on his life choices. The twins are moody assholes. This, he knows. Therefore, he should know better. Better than to wander in with nothing but the thought of Miya cooking and hanging out with his teammates' granny in mind.

But now Rintarou is trapped in this house by their mother, Emi-san, who likes that Osamu was in a class with a boy who got good grades this past year. She also likes that Rintarou would kick the back of Osamu’s chair whenever he drifted off in class. Whether Rintarou’s intentions were for the sake of Osamu’s education or simply because there’s always something hilarious about waking a grumpy Miya up in the middle of a lecture about protein synthesis, the distinction never bothered her. Doesn't matter that his study habits are about as piss poor as Osamu's or Atsumu's. His status as a higher lifeform counts Rintarou as a good influence under this roof.

Currently Osamu is face down on the sofa, glowering. Apparently pitching x-dozen stones at the flood depth sign by the rice paddies until the old farmer yelled at them wasn’t enough to curb his irritation. In the twins' bedroom, Atsumu is being touched by a god. Paper walls have never been so inappropriate. Rintarou rolls onto his belly and wonders why the fuck he’s here.

At eight, the family sits down for dinner around the low dining table. Neither twin was invited to eat, but their absence isn’t missed in the cacophony around the table. Another defining trait of the Miya household: there are always so many people around. Relatives, neighbours, friends of all members of the family. Emori, the creepy ghost, sits across from Rintarou, wedged between Osamu’s father and grandfather. Osamu's grandmother resides at the head of the table, with Emi-san to her right like a handmaiden.

It never fails to boggle Rintarou’s mind when Osamu and Atsumu—unaccustomed to the ways of life of ordinary people and their families—speak about their grandmother as if she is normal.

Yuu-san was a burlesque dancer in Las Vegas during the late 60s, achieving minor fame for her star performance in an act called Sunset in Shanghai. She had to wear a split-side cheongsam with nothing underneath, a story responsible for exorcising all Miya men of their souls every time she recounts it; usually for the purposes of some strange power play. Yuu-san met a sailor in America and married him, deployed with him to Japan, and then divorced when she met Osamu’s and Atsumu’s grandfather, a rice farmer from Hyogo. Rintarou was able to understand his teammates about sixty-five percent better once he understood the composition of their DNA.

“The youkai not eatin’ tonight?” Osamu’s father asks, passing bowls of rice around the table clockwise. Dinner is perhaps the only time of day this family manages to operate like a well oiled machine.

“Struck by filthy moods, the both of ‘em,” Emi-san says. __

“Maybe a typhoon’s comin’.”

“Our sons ain’t dogs, Ken-kun.”

“Maybe Rintarou-kun knows somethin’,” Osamu and Atsumu’s dad says with a shrug. The motion is eerily familiar. Doesn’t stop Rintarou from helping himself to more pickled radish though.

“Well why don’cha just ask him rather than talkin’ about him like he’s not right there?”

All heads swing to Rintarou. He’s reminded of cliche sets of disembodied eyes glowing in the darkness.

“I think they’re upset because our upperclassmen graduated today," Rintarou offers, setting his chopsticks down on the porcelain rest.

“That don’t explain why they’re in such a foul mood. Spring break jus' started.”

“It’s growin’ pains,” Osamu’s mother says, and the others nod sagely. Including Emori, who looks no older than twenty-two and is freeloading off his extended family because he couldn’t keep it in his pants.

“A typhoon is comin’,” Granny declares. She jabs her chopsticks towards the ceiling.

“The twins don’t control the weather, Granny,” Emori says, glancing around the table with a fucky curl to his mouth. The resounding silence could curdle milk. No one joins in on his laughter.

After helping with the dishes, Rintarou returns to Osamu's sofa. Only the dog is there, the real one, curled beside the low table. The twins named her Mi-chan when they were seven. Rintarou heard the name was a coin toss between that or Vegeta.

Rintarou pokes his head out the door in time to see Atsumu slide the bathroom door shut so violently it’s a wonder he doesn’t rip it off the runners. The whole house trembles, a muffled shout echoing inside the bathroom. In Atsumu's ears the frequency must sound like derisive laughter, like the world is laughing at him. This is more than Kita. Humiliation. Rejection. An ego as thin as tissue paper wall. As Rintarou waits for Atsumu to hurl himself back into his room, he tries to estimate the net repair bill of this old house since the twins’ birth.

The sound of Atsumu’s self-flagellation resumes in the next room. Now, Rintarou must take a gamble. The longer Osamu is allowed to stew—both literally and figuratively—the more effort it takes to drag him back to the realm of socially acceptable emotional behaviour. Rintarou knows from experience. He also has ulterior motives. The platinum trophy on Osamu’s copy of Kingdom Hearts II won’t earn itself. The choice is made.

"Osamu," he calls, knocking on the bathroom door. He gets a grunt in return. "I'm coming in."

Rintarou slides the door closed behind him and squats down beside the massive— like the whole family of six could fit in at once—bath, back to Osamu, who looks like he's thinking about drowning himself. The light is notably off. Probably Atsumu's petty take on a final word. Only twins could have a fight about their high school volleyball captain while one sits naked in a bath and the other spent the last two hours audibly screaming into a pillow.

Rintarou briefly reflects on the kind of man who has the power to break the hearts of two twins in one day.

"I ain't talkin," Osamu says.

"Quit making those noises with your mouth then."

Osamu pauses, then spits out a curse. "Granny wouldn' like you so much if she knew you were a fuckin’ prick.”

"Have you even met her?" She uses magazine clippings of herself as an exotic dancer in the 60s to threaten the immediate family into obeying her every whim. Rintarou can only aspire to achieve that level of chaos one day.

Osamu blows defeated bubbles in the water.

"Your life is like the side story of a shitty drama." Rintarou observes blandly.

Osamu dumps water over his head.

Rintarou sinks down, miserable and wet. "Next time you touch me I'll lock you in the storage closet with your brother and throw away the key."

"Quit bitchin' and wash my back."

"How do you know I won't just drown you?"

Osamu mumbles something about Rintarou not having the balls to be a genuine threat. His ignorance will be his downfall.

The fatal error is when Osamu turns his back. Rintarou strikes the killing blow. Osamu taps out with the one part of his body he can keep above water— his left foot—as Rintarou holds him under by the head and shoulder.

Rintarou relents. Osamu pops up, and Rintarou realises too late his mistake. There’s a hard tug at Rintarou's collar, then Osamu gets a workable grip around the back of his neck. The world dissolves into churning bubbles and Osamu's bath water. Rintarou surfaces coughing and spluttering and praying Osamu scrubbed himself thoroughly.

Granny opens the door.

"Tarou jus’ tried to drown me, granny,"

"Don' pull Rintarou-kun into bath fully clothed Osamu you fool. 'S unholy," she scolds, brandishing a rolled magazine like a weapon. "Just give him a whack up the head if he's botherin' you, Rintarou-kun."

Osamu groans and sinks down. Rintarou smirks with supreme self satisfaction. "Yes, ma'am."

"Got a typhoon comin' tonight. Get out an’ help your brother and father take the glass panes outta the windows."

"How could a typhoon be comin’? It’s March!“ Osamu protests, sitting up so fast that water sloshes over the edge. Granny snaps the door closed.

Rintarou sinks back. The wet clothes feel disgusting on his body, but he starts laughing anyway. Eventually, Osamu chuckles too.

They take the panes off and replace them with shutters. The air sits strangely on damp skin.

The typhoon comes overnight. A cloudburst the likes of which has never been seen before in northern Hyogo. Not a single casualty but the flood depth sign by the rice paddies, which gets swept into the river and won't be replaced for another ten years.


	2. pulling teeth

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> happy valentines to all

Osamu's meeting with the career advisor took longer than Rintarou expected.

They amble back to the clubroom slowly; Osamu pensive, Rintarou growing tired of waiting for Osamu to say something already. He’s already tired enough as is. Tired that the act of prodding him to say something can never be simple as just that: prodding. Tired that extracting any sliver of information from Osamu is something akin to the agony and persistence of pulling teeth from the unwilling mouth of a monster.

"So what are you going to do after you graduate?" Rintarou asks once they're inside and dumping their bags on the floor.

Osamu unties his tie. Rintarou leans against the lockers beside him, not in any rush to start changing. Coach will just make them squat till they die as punishment for being late regardless. The longer they hang back, the less time he's legally allowed to detain them on school property.

Rintarou slouches further back, shoving his hands in his pockets. "You know you don't have to quit volleyball, right? If there's something you want to do more then do it," he adds. "But if that is the case, I don't see why you'd be agonising over it so much."

Osamu moves onto his buttons. Rintarou lets out a breath. "This has something to do with Atsumu, doesn't it?"

Osamu reaches the bottom without a single reaction. He shrugs his button up down to a plain undershirt. Whatever. If he thinks Rintarou won't go there then it's his own fault. "Don't think everyone hasn't noticed you two haven't been talking. When did that start again? Was it when Atsumu confessed to Kita-san even though he knew you —"

"Tarou," Osamu appears in front of Rintarou.

"What? Are you finally going to talk?"

Osamu cups his hand around Rintarou's chin. Rintarou's eyebrows scrunch so hard he can feel the creases on his face. The tips of his fingers drag along his jaw, and Rintarou sort of gets the urge to press himself back into the lockers. Then, careful and slow and completely fucking deliberately, Osamu leans in kisses him.

“What the hell?" Rintarou mutters. He shoves his arm under Osamu’s chin to ward his face off. That was the total antithesis of the impulsive act kissing your platonic friend is supposed to be. He’s kinda offended. "Are you seriously kissing me to avoid talking about your feelings?”

“Nah." Osamu licks his lips because he's gross and doesn't understand what boundaries are. "Not like I was gonna talk about ‘em anyway.”

"Don't tell me it's because I was eating melon bread earlier." Rintarou tilts his head back against the lockers to create as much distance between Osamu's mouth and his own as possible. "Were you thinking about that the whole time I was talking just then?"

"You've been complainin' more than usual lately. Can't I just kiss you 'cuz I feel like kissin' you?"

Making words suddenly becomes an effort Rintarou doesn't appreciate. He lets Osamu lean in and kiss him again. At first it's awkward in that way kissing someone new is always awkward. Fumbling to calibrate. The scent of their skin, noses bumping in the middle, the heavy pressure of eyes that should be closed — not curious and bored and curious to see every imperfection of your face in close detail.

Rintarou pulls back, this time to eye Osamu with utmost suspicion. Osamu seems distracted by the untucked edges of Rintarou's bangs. The top of his finger flutters on the edge of his vision. When he tries to lean in again, Rintarou stops him with a hand on his chest.

"Close your eyes. The staring is putting me off."

He's expecting Osamu to argue. To frown harder and tell Rintarou he doesn't know why he cares. To walk away because the kiss wasn't that great, not exactly worth the risk of making things even weirder between them — 

Osamu closes his eyes. He waits three seconds, gets impatient and mutters, "If you're doin' this just to mess with me —“

Rintarou tips Osamu's face left, up just by a degree, and kisses him again.

This time it's good.

They kiss until Rintarou's hands end up in Osamu's back pockets. Here, he finds the shredded pieces of their normal friendship and Osamu's career advice slip. They only stop when Gin comes looking for them. Gin doesn't bat an eye to discover Osamu eating Rintarou's face off like some cursed creature or Rintarou’s hands on his volleyball shaped ass.

"Atsumu just locked himself in the storage room. Either a' you got the key?"


	3. three seconds

As it turns out, Atsumu locking himself in the storage room with all the keys is a premeditated scene.

Atsumu has two conditions for his own release. One: someone first has to slide a protein bar under the door, because he skipped lunch to watch the girls cheerleading team and he can't toss for anyone if he's forced to eat his own arm. Two: he refuses to be rescued until someone agrees to lock Osamu in there with him so he can have an identity crisis with his entire identity present. Upon the delivery of the latter condition, Osamu drags Rintarou back into the clubroom and tries to eat his tongue out of his mouth like a bird with a worm. He's so furious in his attempt to pretend Atsumu doesn't exist and those aren't his wails emanating from the gym below that he forgoes breathing and almost passes out against the lockers.

In the weeks that follow, the team starts making bets about which twin will survive the inevitable explosion. Gin bets ten thousand that the extra kilogram and couple millimetres Osamu has on Atsumu will make the difference. Rintarou disagrees, because Osamu is simple and Atsumu would bring a knife to a fist fight. Osamu would expect Atsumu to do that, sure, but Osamu would also believe that if he could just slug Atsumu fast enough, he'd win anyway. The Miyas are scarcely more than barbarians when it comes to each other. Rintarou doesn't know why he spends so much time around them.

There's a widespread belief that the differences between Atsumu and Osamu make Osamu generally more suited to coexistence with humankind. He doesn't lock himself in storage rooms. He can make expressions other than immense self satisfaction and immense suffering. Animals like him.

Rintarou disagrees. Atsumu is simply an overt harbinger of chaos, hell personified and directed outward, like gamma rays emanating from a chunk of radioactive waste. The effects are obvious, once he washes up on your banks and proceeds to contaminate the entire ecosystem. Eventually, his extended presence will be responsible for a localised extinction.

Osamu is the creature that crawls out of the belly of some forest, sneaks into your house and steals your baby, because that’s what happened to him when he was human. The child will grow up to be like him, not knowing that everyone else in the entire world is different and that he alone is strange. The day that child searches for another of his kind, he will realise that he is alone.

Rintarou thinks Osamu is worse.

“Stop staring at me.”

The theme on the PlayStation home screen loops again. Osamu, who was supposed to pick a game twenty minutes ago, hasn’t even inserted a disk yet. Meanwhile, Rintarou is sprawled out on his bed, attempting to read an email from Coach Oomi outlining the Division 1 teams that have expressed interest in observing him at the Interhigh.

“Your face looks different now that I know what kissin' you is like. Never done that with a guy before,” Osamu tells him. Muffled, because he’s lying on the floor with his cheek squished against his knuckles.

“Are you implying that other people have actually wanted to kiss you before?” Rintarou mocks, voice flat. He doesn’t deem this conversation worthy of looking up from his phone, but he does anyway. Only to find Osamu staring at him. Still. In a creepy, barely blinking but still half-lidded way. Fucking creature.

Rintarou expects many things. He expects Osamu to parrot, other people? and curl his lips into that lazy smirk he reserves for when he wins at janken. He expects Osamu to change the subject in ten minutes when Rintarou will try to bring up the future or volleyball or Atsumu. He expects that in no less than five seconds, Osamu will be off the floor and looming over him. Probably licking his lips too, because subtlety is dead and Osamu is the one who killed it.

“Mm,” Osamu grunts more than anything resembling human language. Osamu has a one track mind. Osamu is staring at Rintarou’s mouth.

Three seconds.

There he goes. Rintarou tries to hold back a sigh as Osamu picks himself up off the ground in the worst and best way. How a person can simultaneously move as if he just grew limbs today but could also leg press a small car defies all logic.

Osamu flings Rintarou’s phone to the other side of the bed like it personally insulted his granny. He then proceeds to straddle Rintarou’s thighs.

“Can you not go five minutes without my attention?”

Osamu ignores him. “Think you can do a sit up with me holdin’ you down?”

“That’s not fair,” Rintarou observes, wrinkling his nose. Osamu takes that as the green light to press both hands against his chest and shove him into the mattress. All the air in Rintarou's lungs punches out through his mouth. “Are you serious? There isn't anything to prove when you've got a fundamental advantage by sitting on top of me.”

“You sayin’ you yield?”

"I'm saying you're heavy."

"You can just say you're givin' up if you're givin' up, Tarou."

"I'm saying if you want a pissing contest, you better go make up with your brother." The stab in the dark makes a hit. Osamu's face twists like Rintarou betrayed him by somehow gaining the ability to read his mind. "Don't give me that look," Rintarou reprimands, reaching up. He pulls Osamu down by the face. Osamu follows. Heavy enough to make Rintarou conscious of every breath he sends over Osamu's mouth, but that's all. Osamu Miya. Just seventeen and looking at Rintarou with eyes that don't expect to be understood.

"I'm only me,” Rintarou tells him. “I can't be both for you, Samu."


End file.
